Weather

Luke is in California for his final court-ordered summer visit. He’s a little too close to the wildfires for my comfort, but it looks like Anza is in no real danger.

A few days ago Elizabeth and I decided to cool off after a hike with a swim in our apartment pool. The water was perfect, just cool enough to be refreshing.

After maybe five minutes, Elizabeth said, “Now I’m cold.”

Me: “How can you be cold? The water’s barely lukewarm!”

Elizabeth: “You’re fat.”

Me: “….”

Elizabeth: “You have a protective layer of blubber protecting you from the cold.”

I burst into laughter so hard I might have sunk if the pool were deeper. Partly at the absurdity of her statement (I could probably stand to lose five or ten pounds, but I’m hardly into manatee territory), but mostly because she sparked a flashback to the years of my life when no one – and this is literal fact, not hyperbole – no one was allowed to utter the words “old” or “fat” in any context within earshot of my mother. The farther I get from that madness, the more bizarre it all seems in retrospect. Most of my response to Elizabeth’s comment was just relief at how far we’ve come.

While I’m here, I guess I’ll share some pics that don’t really need whole posts of their own. Here are some from the Fourth of July, when a storm almost rained out the fireworks…

…some local flora and fauna…

…and Elizabeth crossing creeks on logs. No log is too low or high or long or narrow or wobbly for her, she’s drawn to them like a cat to cardboard boxes.

I think that’s everything in my random-pic pile. I’ll get back to writing real posts eventually.

Enchantment Rock State Natural Area opens its gates at 8am. We had planned to arrive at 7:30 to beat the Spring Break crowds, but we received a timely warning that earlier would be safer, so we set our alarm for 4am and got there by 6.

Google Maps has the entrance marked a bit farther down the road than it actually is; we missed it at first and had to turn around. There was already a car parked outside the gate when we drove past. We did a U-turn as soon as it was safe and got back to the entrance like two minutes later, and by then we were third in line. More cars immediately lined up behind us. By 7:30, when the sky was light enough to let me take this photo, the line stretched out of sight down the road.

Enchanted Rock as seen from the driveway: basically a granite dome 425 feet high.

When the gate was opened we paid our entry fee, parked the car and headed up the rock. At the bottom there are trails, but pretty soon it’s all just granite.

It’s steep enough to be a workout, but still more of a walk than a climb.

In the background of the next photo you can see the endless line of cars full of people hoping to be let into the park. Only a certain number of visitors are allowed in at a time.

We felt very thankful to be up on the rock instead of sitting in line!

It took us maybe 10 or 15 minutes to reach the summit…

…and find the USGS benchmark.

Being out in the wild climbing again felt amazing, and the views were great.

There’s a cave entrance near the summit with an exit about halfway down the back face. I guess you could climb up through it from the other direction, but it would be harder. Even doing it downhill, the experience was more intense than I had expected. Here is the entrance:

Once you go in, it gets pitch black fast. We had planned to explore the cave and brought our trusty little camp lantern with us as a flashlight.

Most of the pics I took inside the cave came out blurry, since I couldn’t manually focus in the dark and my camera’s autofocus usually grabbed the wrong subject during the moment of flash.

The most important thing is to follow the arrows. They keep you going in the right direction.

It was super fun, but I wouldn’t say it was easy.

There were some really tight spots. A larger person wouldn’t physically be able to make it all the way through this cave.

You practically have to be a contortionist to get through some spaces. That’s my shoe in the bottom left of the next photo.

Speaking of which, I can’t say enough good things about those shoes. I used them hard for four days straight, and my feet felt as fresh and comfortable at the end of the fourth day as they did the morning of the first day. Ariat Terrain H2O waterproof shoes, designed for endurance riders. Easily the best hiking shoes I’ve ever worn. They’re really durable, too. We bought the non-waterproof versions back in 2011 for our trip to the Grand Canyon, and Elizabeth’s pair is still going strong.

I’m not getting paid or anything, I just love the shoes.

Here is the exit. This is not a cave for claustrophobes.

Once we made it out, we just chilled on the side of the rock and watched the turkey vultures circle for a while.

If you click on the next photo to open the full-size image, and zoom in on the red arrow, you can see a little flash of blue from a creek.

I wanted to see the creek close-up, so we made the descent.

Getting down the back face wasn’t as easy as it looked, but we made it to the bottom.

And we found the creek!

We had received a trail map when we arrived, so we plotted the shortest course around the base of the rock and back to our car.

That whole day was so restorative and relaxing. Just tremendously good for the soul.

Google Maps took us home by the scenic route, winding through the hill country on farm-to-market roads, and I enjoyed every mile of it. So much nicer than dealing with I-35.

A few days after we got back, Luke decided it was haircut time again. I think short hair suits him.

So that was this year’s road trip. Elizabeth turned 20 on the third day, but we were all too sugared-out for cake, so her celebration was postponed.

We’re looking forward to the move, and we’re grateful for everything that living in DFW has taught us.

A new chapter of our lives is about to begin, and we’re eager to turn the page.

On Day Three we got down to business, driving around looking at neighborhoods, apartment complexes and libraries.

I cannot overemphasize Luke’s reliance on public libraries to feed his insatiable appetite for knowledge. He checks out stacks of books at a time, almost all non-fiction, almost all on political or historical topics. Access to a good library is fundamentally necessary to his happiness and quality of life. Unfortunately, the little neighborhood libraries in San Antonio are geared more toward families and young children. None of them met the needs of our young revolutionary.

Our search for the right neighborhood was no more successful than Luke’s search for the right library. We found a few pretty ones, but nothing really clicked for us.

We did check out a local H-E-B, which is where virtually everyone in San Antonio gets their groceries, and we had a small, childish laugh when we discovered what H-E-B stands for.

We had contacted some apartment complexes in advance and arranged for viewings. One of these was up on the far north side, which we had not yet visited. Driving into this part of the city on Loop 410 was a surreal experience. The farther north we drove, the more San Antonio’s unique Hispanic flavor was replaced by ubiquitous chain stores and restaurants: Target, Walmart, Home Depot, Red Lobster, Olive Garden, Pappadeaux. It looked like North Richland Hills. Add some mountains and palm trees and it could have been Temecula. As we left the freeway loop and continued north on surface streets, it became more and more clear that a completely different culture presides up there. Before our trip someone told me that “living outside of 410 is like living in a real-life Truman Show,” and now I know what they meant.

And here I have to grudgingly admit, not without a certain small amount of self-loathing, that this part of the city falls more into our comfort zone than the colorful southern parts do. It checks all of the boxes: easy access to wild green spaces and hiking areas, sunny yards for a kitchen garden, boarding stables for Mahogany. This is most likely where we will end up, or at least start out.

When we got to the apartments that we had arranged to look at in this area, the office manager was out. We walked around on our own to get a feel of the place and realized fairly quickly that it wasn’t what we were looking for. The complex was built onto a hillside, and the driveways and parking spaces were so steep they looked like a transmission/parking brake endurance challenge. The location itself was uninspiring as well.

As we walked back to our car, the manager passed nearby in his golf cart on his way back to the office. He stared at us like he thought we were tweaker transients looking for scrap metal to pilfer.

We figured we might as well go in and talk to him since he was supposedly expecting us, so we changed course and headed to the office. I told him that I had spoken to someone on the phone about looking at the apartments.

Maybe he really did think we were transients or something, because he treated us as if we were wasting his time. He launched condescendingly into a list of requirements – income verification, criminal background check, rental history and so on – as if each one were a “gotcha” that would obviously disqualify us. By the time he realized that we were actual potential customers and adjusted his tone accordingly, we had lost all interest in doing business with him.

Those apartments weren’t right for us anyway, but the experience felt like a bad omen. For whatever reason, our appearance apparently wasn’t up to the local standards. What’s even the point of moving if we’re just going to end up in the same kind of conformist gatekeeping nonsense that makes DFW so visually appealing but culturally uninteresting?

The only other place that we had wanted to visit on the far north side was the “highest elevation point in San Antonio.” That turned out to be kind of a letdown too. The highest point in San Antonio is a restaurant parking lot that isn’t very high.

We chilled there for a while and talked about our impressions of San Antonio. The one thing we know for sure is that DFW isn’t where we want to be. It absolutely has its good points, but it’s a slow death of the soul for people like us. Here’s an example: in the four and a half years that I have lived in the Metroplex, I have not managed to have a single meaningful, get-to-know-each-other conversation with anyone there, and it hasn’t been for lack of trying. They are mostly a polite, pleasant people who are happy to chat about the weather and other superficial topics. I’ve had fun conversations, clever conversations, informative conversations. But whenever I try to bring up any deeper philosophical topics, they either laugh uncomfortably and change the subject, wander off, or tell me straight up that they cannot understand what I’m talking about. I’ve begun to suspect that there is actually no deeper level in their minds at all, even though that goes against everything I believe about the human soul. And yes, I realize how douchey and Iamverysmart I sound right now, but this is a profoundly alienating environment for us. Like, if it turned out that the entire population of DFW were actually androids like in The Stepford Wives or The World’s End, I would just be like, “Well, that explains it then.”

Anyway. Luke said that the absence of good libraries in San Antonio was a dealbreaker. I said that he just needs to give up on the little local branches and start looking at college libraries. We weren’t too far from UTSA at that point, so we drove over to look at its Peace Library.

Luck was just not with us that day. The library closed at 6pm, and we reached its door at 6:04. Still, the idea of having access to college and university libraries satisfied Luke. We agreed to give San Antonio a shot, and if it doesn’t turn out to be the right place for us, well, there’s a whole wide world out there just waiting to be explored.

When we were planning last year’s road trip to Austin, someone told me that we should definitely check out Enchanted Rock. We didn’t make it that time, but we did add it to the list of stuff we eventually wanted to do. So for this trip our plan was to leave San Antonio on the afternoon of the third day, spend the night at a campsite at the Enchanted Rock State Natural Area, and spend as much of the fourth day climbing around and exploring as we felt like before heading home.

This should have been completely doable. I had submitted my vacation request about a month in advance, after clearing the dates with my supervisor. My request sat in the system, unadressed, until three days before we had planned to leave. It was declined.

I had mentioned this road trip to various managers over the course of the month and no one had given me any indication that it would be a problem. I have a new supervisor now than the one that I had originally cleared the vacation with, but still. I had requested less than half of the vacation time I had accrued – four days out of the week-and-a-half I could have asked for – and somehow that was too much.

Anyway, long story short, I spoke to my new supervisor and got my four days of vacation, but not the same four days that I had requested. So even if I had rolled the dice and reserved a campsite at Enchanted Rock far enough in advance, it wouldn’t have done any good because we ended up not being there on the night we thought we would.

We ended up just playing the whole thing by ear. When the sun set on the third day we were sitting near a fountain in a courtyard at UTSA, still discussing our life goals. Our tent was in the trunk, and we still wanted to see Enchanted Rock, so I called a KOA near Fredericksburg and tried to reserve a campsite. They were booked full for Spring Break, but they recommended a nearby park that offered no-frills tent camping. I called there and was able to secure a spot.

It was an hour’s drive to the Lady Bird Johnson Municipal Park. When I checked in the receptionist asked if we were going to Enchanted Rock. I said we were, and she advised me to get there as early as possible, since she had heard that the lines were already really long by 7:30am. If I had known how useful that bit of advice would turn out to be, I might have hugged her right there. For real, she saved our whole day.

Camping tech has come a long way since my childhood days of heavy canvas tents and dim kerosene lanterns. We just bought a basic 4-person Coleman Sundome for this trip, but I love it. The most challenging part of putting it up was the brisk wind that kept trying to blow everything away. Once we got it assembled and staked down, the wind was a non-issue.

Lighting tech is on a whole new level these days. Our little $10 LED lantern was almost too bright on its brightest setting. The half-brightness setting was easier on the eyes and still lit up the whole interior when we hung it from the handy loop in the center of the tent.

The lantern really proved its value when it turned out that these primitive tent sites had no access to electricity. It runs off of a lithium battery that lasts forever, recharges via USB and doubles as a portable charger. So it provided plenty of light for setting up the tent and eating the supper we’d packed, recharged my camera’s battery while we slept, and then (partially) recharged itself on the half-hour drive to Enchanted Rock the next morning.

One of the biggest advantages San Antonio has over DFW is public transit. It’s crazy that most of the Metroplex has no public bus system at all. The bike-share programs that are taking hold in Fort Worth, Dallas and parts of Arlington have not yet spread to the smaller mid-city suburbs. This has been incredibly limiting for Luke and Elizabeth, and inconvenient for me since I have to drive them everywhere. So on Day Two we tried out San Antonio’s B-Cycle system and its public VIA transit.

We parked at the Blue Star Arts Complex just south of downtown. I had already downloaded the B-Cycle app and prepaid a 24-hour pass for myself. We bought 24-hour passes for Luke and Elizabeth directly from the kiosk at the Blue Star’s B-Cycle station. The system is simple: each pass buys unlimited use of all B-Cycle bikes and stations for 24 hours, one bike at a time per pass. Each bike has to be docked at a station at least once per hour to avoid extra fees. You can also purchase monthly or yearly passes.

Elizabeth carried that huge backpack around all day, I have no idea why. I don’t even know what was in it.

We rode the Hike-and-Bike trail along the river to visit four historic missions. The weather was glorious.

Mission Concepción, founded by Franciscan friars in 1731, is first on the trail. One of the first major battles of the Texas Revolution took place here in 1835.

We found a shrine on the mission grounds and I thought, “That’s a weird place to put a shoeshine stand,” and then I realized that I’m an idiot.

Mass is still held in the mission on Sundays. I didn’t take any photos inside the church itself because I didn’t want to seem disrespectful.

Luke’s philosophy is “Why walk when you can run?” It’s like there’s too much world he wants to see to waste time getting there slowly.

We had docked our bikes at the B-Cycle station in Mission Concepción Park, not realizing that it was a 15-minute walk from the park to the mission itself. Luckily there is another station just outside the mission, so we didn’t have to walk back to get our bikes.

We took the bike lane on Mission Rd until it reconnected with the river trail, then followed the signs to Mission San José.

This is my favorite of the four missions. It was founded in 1720 and is still an active parish with a beautiful little church.

The church entrance:

We hit our first snag with the B-Cycle system when we were ready to leave Mission San José. Only four bikes were docked at the Mission station and two had flat tires. Not a catastrophe: it was an easy 15-minute walk to another B-Cycle station at Padre Park. But that station was having some sort of connectivity issues; we spent close to half an hour coaxing three bikes out of it.

At least the view was nice. We got to watch kayaks going down a river chute from the shady comfort of our pavilion.

Once we all finally had our bikes, we continued on to Mission San Juan. This is a pretty stretch of trail, with woods and bridges.

Mission San Juan Capistrano was founded in 1731. It was heavily restored in 2015, including the addition of a coat of white plaster on the main structure. It was small to begin with and there wasn’t a lot left of it.

Like the other missions, it still has a nice church.

Our last stop, Mission San Francisco de la Espada, was originally founded in 1690 in northeast Texas, or what was then northern New Spain. It was relocated to San Antonio in 1731. Like Mission San Juan, it has lost some of its historic charm due to extensive restoration.

This is the ground that we covered on the Mission Trail, including the walk back to Padre Park:

It took a lot longer than an hour, though, with all the time we spent exploring the missions. We rolled out of the Blue Star at about 10:45am and finished up at Mission Espada a little after 5pm, sunburned and ready for supper. I have just now realized that we went about eight hours without eating anything that day and didn’t even feel hungry until we were headed back to the Blue Star. The missions and the bike trail kept us completely captivated.

We left our bikes docked at the Mission Espada station and walked to the nearest bus stop. Here we got lucky: there’s a bus route that just goes back and forth between the missions and downtown. It took us about six hours to cover that distance by bicycle and maybe 35 minutes to get back by bus. Then another 10 or 15 minutes to walk from where we got off the bus back to the Blue Star. We could have waited for a connecting bus, but that would have taken longer.

The bus was clean and pleasant, and the driver and passengers were very friendly. Three thumbs up for public transit.

The original plan was to see the missions, have lunch at Alamode Panini and Gelato in the Blue Star Complex, go tour some local neighborhoods and then have supper at Mi Tierra. But it was so late by the time we got back to the Blue Star, we only had time for one of the restaurants. I was leaning toward panini and gelato, but the kids had their hearts set on Mi Tierra. I bowed to the majority, and we had a nice Mexican dinner.

For some reason – probably hunger – I forgot how expensive parking is downtown and just drove to the public lot closest to the restaurant. We did get some nice views of the skyline.

Not sure the views were worth the $10, though.

Mi Tierra was packed with tourists. We basically inhaled our meal and then spent the next twenty minutes trying to get our waiter’s attention for the check. To be fair, he had a large party keeping him running.

The mercado is pretty at night.

This spot reminded us of Disneyland. New Orleans Square on the right with the Matterhorn in the background:

The last landmark on our Day Two checklist was the Hays St Bridge. It’s a pedestrian-only bridge, so we headed back to the Pearl Brewery to trade our car for some bikes. I love that they repurposed the old buildings without changing their names.

There’s no hike-and-bike trail between the Pearl and the bridge, but there are mostly continuous bike lanes on the streets. We got there with no problems.

We got a nice view of downtown.

That was a fun ride. We like the B-Cycles.

We got back to the hotel around 10 or 10:30 and had no trouble falling asleep.

We headed back to San Antonio over Spring Break to make a final decision on whether or not to move there, and hopefully to find a neighborhood we liked. This time the weather cooperated with our efforts – highs in the 70s and just enough clouds to keep things balmy.

We fell in love with the Riverwalk on our last visit, so that’s where we spent our first day. We left the car at the Pearl Brewery, which is as close as we could get to the Alamo from the north side without paying for parking.

Just as the City of Austin Power Plant is no longer a power plant, the Pearl Brewery is no longer a brewery. The lovely old buildings have been repurposed into shops, restaurants, hotels and apartments.

Some structures have kept their original names: the Can Plant is now resident apartments, the Bottling Department is a food hall. The stable that once housed horses to pull the beer wagons is now an upscale venue for formal events:

There are still rails in the ground in places, but they’re no longer in use.

The San Antonio river was the old brewery’s source of fresh water, so the Pearl sits right on its bank. This is where the Riverwalk begins, though the river itself continues upstream for another four miles to its spring-fed origins.

A river shuttle carries passengers back and forth between the Pearl and the downstream end of the Riverwalk, about five miles each way.

Our plan was to walk the river at least as far as Hemisfair Park and explore whatever caught our interest along the way, then catch a Rio Shuttle back to the Pearl when we were ready to call it a night.

I love the art installations along the river. The first one we came to was “The Grotto,” a cave-like formation that also serves as access to the the Riverwalk from street level via the mouth of a stone jaguar.

Next we came to the school of glass fish that hangs beneath the I-35 overpass.

At night each fish is illuminated from within. Absolutely gorgeous.

On the grounds of the Museum of Art, a mariachi band was performing for a family party.

Hispanic culture is deep in this city’s roots. San Antonio was founded in 1718 as a Spanish mission, 58 years before the American colonies drafted their Declaration of Independence and 127 years before Texas first joined the United States. This is an old, old city by American standards.

We reached the boat locks and dam just as one of the rio shuttles arrived, so we stopped to watch it go through.

Local directories are posted at regular intervals. When we passed near the Central Library, we headed up to check it out.

San Antonio’s Central Library is an interesting mix of colorful and industrial, artistic and utilitarian.

Luke found an ample selection of books in his interest range (mostly politics and history), but he deemed the ambiance to be uninviting almost to the point of oppressiveness. I reminded him that even in Fort Worth the big central library has security guards posted on every floor, but I did see his point. This is not really a cozy library.

We returned to the Riverwalk and continued on. We had planned to tour the Alamo, but the whole area was packed with tourists visiting for Spring Break and we didn’t feel like standing in line for an hour.

We walked around the Alamo grounds for a bit and then continued on to Hemisfair Park and the Tower of the Americas.

The Tower was built for the 1968 World’s Fair. It is 750 feet high and provides a commanding 360-degree view of the city from observation decks at the top.

The views are expansive, but my emotional response bordered on claustrophobia. This city just goes on forever in all directions.

13-year-old me would have delighted in the idea of living in that close-packed warren of humanity, but 48-year-old me wants easy access to wild green spaces and a sunny yard for a kitchen garden. Even the city parks seem few and far between here.

I had to remind myself that we just need to find the right neighborhood, and then the urban sprawl won’t feel closed-in. As Fortune Red once wisely told me,”It’s the company what makes the feast.” And even from the heart of San Antonio, the wild spaces around the edges are an easy half-hour drive away.

We had timed our visit to the Tower to coincide with sunset, because I had wanted to see the city in daylight and Luke had wanted to see it at night. We got through the lines a bit earlier than we had expected, so after I got my daylight views we came back down and killed some time in the park. There is a nice play area there with lots of climby stuff.

When the sun set, we returned to the Tower for Luke’s nighttime view.

The city really does go on forever in all directions.

When we had seen our fill, we returned to the Riverwalk.

We were ready to catch a rio shuttle back to the Pearl, but alas, we just missed the last boat. We decided to walk back to the car on surface streets to shave off some distance. But we wanted to see the illuminated fish, so we cut back to the Riverwalk just before the I-35 underpass.

The fish are gorgeous at night, but challenging to photograph well. I really need to spend some time learning how to get clear, distortion-free photos of bright objects at night. These images don’t do the scene justice.

We got back to the car, checked into a nearby hotel, had a quick meal of sandwiches that we’d brought with us and then went to sleep.

Day One verdict: the Riverwalk and downtown are as beautiful as we remembered, but the idea of living in such a densely populated area is mildly intimidating. The suburbs are a strong option.